The keyword void indicates that the main method does not return any value to the caller. If a Java program is to exit with an error code, it must call System.exit() explicitly.
The method name "main" is not a keyword in the Java language. It is simply the name of the method the Java launcher calls to pass control to the program. Java classes that run in managed environments such as applets and Enterprise Java Beans do not use or need a main() method. A java program may contain multiple classes that have main methods, which means that the VM needs to be explicitly told which class to launch from.
The main method must accept an array of String objects. By convention, it is referenced as args although any other legal identifier name can be used. Since Java 5, the main method can also use variable arguments, in the form of public static void main(String... args), allowing the main method to be invoked with an arbitrary number of String arguments. The effect of this alternate declaration is semantically identical (the args parameter is still an array of String objects), but allows an alternate syntax for creating and passing the array.
The Java launcher launches Java by loading a given class (specified on the command line or as an attribute in a JAR) and starting its public static void main(String[]) method. Stand-alone programs must declare this method explicitly. The String[] args parameter is an array of String objects containing any arguments passed to the class. The parameters to main are often passed by means of a command line.
Printing is part of a Java standard library: The System class defines a public static field called out. The out object is an instance of the PrintStream class and provides many methods for printing data to standard out, including println(String) which also appends a new line to the passed string.
The string "Hello, world!" is automatically converted to a String object by the compiler.
Applet:
Java applets are programs that are embedded in other applications, typically in a Web page displayed in a Web browser.
// Hello.java
import javax.swing.JApplet;
import java.awt.Graphics;
public class Hello extends JApplet {
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
g.drawString("Hello, world!", 65, 95);
}
}
The import statements direct the Java compiler to include the javax.swing.JApplet and java.awt.Graphics classes in the compilation. The import statement allows these classes to be referenced in the source code using the simple class name (i.e. JApplet) instead of the fully qualified class name (i.e. javax.swing.JApplet).
The Hello class extends (subclasses) the JApplet (Java Applet) class; the JApplet class provides the framework for the host application to display and control the lifecycle of the applet. The JApplet class is a JComponent (Java Graphical Component) which provides the applet with the capability to display a graphical user interface (GUI) and respond to user events.
The Hello class overrides the paintComponent(Graphics) method inherited from the Container superclass to provide the code to display the applet. The paint() method is passed a Graphics object that contains the graphic context used to display the applet. The paintComponent() method calls the graphic context drawString(String, int, int) method to display the "Hello, world!" string at a pixel offset of (65, 95) from the upper-left corner in the applet`s display.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<!-- Hello.html -->
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello World Applet</title>
</head>
<body>
<applet code="Hello" width="200" height="200">
</applet>
</body>
</html>
An applet is placed in an HTML document using the <applet> HTML element. The applet tag has three attributes set: code="Hello" specifies the name of the JApplet class and width="200" height="200" sets the pixel width and height of the applet. Applets may also be embedded in HTML using either the object or embed element[24], although support for these elements by Web browsers is inconsistent.[25] However, the applet tag is deprecated, so the object tag is preferred where supported.
The host application, typically a Web browser, instantiates the Hello applet and creates an AppletContext for the applet. Once the applet has initialized itself, it is added to the AWT display hierarchy. The paint method is called by the AWT event dispatching thread whenever the display needs the applet to draw itself.